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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T06:55:24+00:00

This may be self evident to power Java programmers, but may not be so

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This may be self evident to power Java programmers, but may not be so for those who are just starting the Java journey.

After downloading JDK from Sun and installing it on Windows, what environment variables should one set to use javac etc.. from command line tools like vi? (see Programming Java with Vim) Also, how does one set environment variables on Windows?

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  1. Editorial Team

    See How to set the path in Windows 2000 / Windows XP for changing environment variables on Windows.

    1. From the desktop, right-click My Computer and click properties.
    2. In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab.
    3. In the Advanced section, click the Environment Variables button.
    4. Finally, in the Environment Variables window, highlight the path variable in the Systems Variable section and click edit. Add or modify the path lines with the paths you wish the computer to access. Each different directory is separated with a semicolon as shown below.

    I suggest adding a systems variable called JAVA_HOME and set that to 

    C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_13

    or wherever the installer installed Java.

    Then add 

    ;%JAVA_HOME%\bin

    at the end of PATH variable. Note the semicolon is not a typo.

    Another important environment variable that may come in handy later is CLASSPATH. For now, this does not need to be set, but nice to keep it in mind.

    The class path tells SDK tools and applications where to find third-party and user-defined classes

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